Robert Benfer
Robert Leon Benfer, Jr. (born on December 18, 1987), better known by his pseudonym Knox, is an internet-based claymator, animator, musician, director, producer, writer, editor, and voice actor. Early life Benfer was born on December 18, 1987, in Hinesville, Georgia. His father, Robert Benfer Sr., was a detective, author, and soldier, perhaps most famously known as the author of the book Silently We Defend, and was and based at Fort Stewart during this period. In 1988, Benfer and his wife, Janeese Schoelzel, moved to Germany, where his sister Nikki was born. At age 2, Benfer's parents got divorced and moved alongside his mother and sister to Kerrville, Texas because of an incident with his father at a gay bar, causing a riot in his hometown. In 1994, Benfer's mother became engaged to Curtis Schoelzel, and moved to Schertz, Texas, where Robert spent the remainder of his childhood and Benfer and Schoelzel gave birth to Jakki Schoelzel and Jill Schoelzel. Robert was also diagnosed with a condition that has the potential to cause him cancer and as a result has been hospitalized multiple times over the course of his early life and teenage years while he was in the beginning stages of his career. Career in animation Newgrounds films In 1995, Benfer began to attend Schertz Elementary School. While attending the institute, Benfer met Sammie Penrod, who would later become his friend and costar in many of his films. At age 6, Benfer aqquired an interest in filmmaking and from age 7 to 12, used his parents' video camera to film short films alongside his sister, Nikki. At age 15, Benfer would develop an interest in stop motion by watching Celebrity Deathmatch, which would later inspire him to make tributes to the show known as "NG Deathmatch", and he began to post claymation short films on animation outlet Newgrounds, going under the pseudonym "Knox". His pseudonym was largely influenced by childhood friend Sammie Penrod, who originally suggested in high school that the two would form a band entitled "Stigma". However, Benfer pointed out that they "never made any music", prompting Penrod to suggest changing the band name to "Knox"; however, the concept was quickly dropped by the two. Several of Benfer's early films were notable for starring clay characters resembling a blue blob with various human appendages. Although these designs were initially used for practice, their popularity among the Newgrounds community prompted his simplicity to become his trademark filmaking style. Another notable style of Benfer was his tendency to replace the letter c with a k (for example; his claymations were billed as "klaymations"). These small animations were the first of many Knox clay animations. At this time, there were very few clay animations on Newgrounds.com, as Newgrounds was accommodating to animations rendered entirely within Flash software, the software the website singularly supported. Because of this, Robert was able to open a whole new door for future stop motion creators all over the internet, and hundreds of people followed in his footsteps, many becoming popular, though Knox maintained his reputation as the leader of the movement. He posted 45 short films on the Internet in 2003, and won 35 awards for them on Newgrounds. In 2004, Benfer created some of his most successful clay animations, including Glass of Water, Sniper Time!, and Rubber Ducky of Death. His first attempt at turning his internet success into a career was releasing a DVD of his short films entitled Knox in a Box. Feature films At the end of 2004, after the success of his first DVD, Benfer decided to adapt his series into a feature length movie entitled Klay World: Off the Table. The film was released in 2005, and earned him over $80,000.00, marking the beginning of his film career. At the start of his film career, the KlayWorld shorts would degrade in quality and would eventually be regarded as bland and boring by his original fan base; although the formulae is still essentially the same, it's debatable that a one detail over the course of time has changed and as a result has drastically shifted the overall mood of KlayWorld from being based around slapstick to almost strictly dialogue; Robert's KlayWorld shorts followed a comedic basis of characters lacking in intelligence, as Robert himself has described them as being retarded, committing acts of nonsense or becoming victimized of nonsense occurring ensuing in disasters usually resulting in all the characters to die; the detail changed was that the nonsense, previously based around impulse would later become based around flawed logic. An example of this would be to compare Glass of Water with Poison Juice as they share the same basis; people dying via mass consumption of liquid. In Glass of Water the short's protagonist would spill a cup of water resulting in surrounding characters to drown their selves in the puddle on the ground proclaiming that the area has been flooded as a result and their self drowning in the puddle was the result of their lack of swimming ability, despite the circumstances not calling for needing swimming ability. Poison Juice consists of four characters who are about to commence in drinking their juice before the first to do so dies immediately after, a character proclaims "the juice has been poisoned!", leading characters to attempt to deduct who the killer was by eventually consuming the juice with the hypothesis that the killer would never drink his own poison and the one participant to not drink his glass would be deducted as the killer; as a result they all die from self induced poison. Another given detail that could be the result of the series' shift in mood is the fact that in all his shorts prior to KlayWorld: Off The Table, Robert's shorts were never scripted but rather were animated and given improvised voice acting during post production. Between 2005 and 2008, Robert would announce several other feature length movies, whilst the releases of his online animations got rarer and rarer. The first of these movies was Villain, a more professional clay animation movie. Robert initially began work on this movie, producing two minutes of footage, but was then offered a larger crew and funding for the movie. This transaction failed and Robert would suffer massive financial losses as a result of not filing the income tax's of KlayWorld: Off The Table's profit to the I.R.S. and as a result had lost a large fraction of his money, although the exact amount was never confirmed, it's been rumored to be $50,000. The loss forced him to put the project on a long term hiatus. Robert also announced plans for a sequel to Klay World: Off The Table, entitled Klay World 2. He stated the release date as late 2008, but never started work on it. He is currently aiming to produce it sometime in the future. In 2008, Robert announced his first live action movie, Lakeside has no Lake. This was to be about a group of friends who set up a website claiming that their hometown, Lakeside, was haunted. Robert tweaked the plot and it became Joe Cam (2008). Though his fans initially had doubts about Joe Cam, after the stream of unsuccessful movie plots, Robert released a trailer for the movie in June, showing over two minutes of footage proving that the movie was indeed in the works. However, due to actor Sammie Penrod playing, the movies antagonist moving to a new location the films production was brought to an abrupt halt due to issues of distance conflicting with shooting schedules and as a result, Robert would again be forced to put another film on hiatus. As a result, Robert was forced to resort in making another film on his list, requiring even less to create than Joe Cam, The Fracktaplots; a sock puppet epic that was released in 2010. The film was heavily criticized by fans for it's premise of being what many would describe as "cheap", but the film was mildly redeemed among fans when it became apparent to that the likes of a band called Econoline Crush would supply the movie's leading theme song; Surefire. However, Robert would later make the mistake of changing his website design and company name from "KnoxsKorner.com" to "BadIdeaPictures.com" resulting in many of what was left of his old fan base to revolt and cease to continue following his film making career entirely. Robert is now in the current process of changing the company name and website design again. Robert currently has plans of bringing Joe Cam out of hiatus by moving closer to Sammie Penrod so the distance issues will accommodate the movie's shooting schedule, to rerelease the Klayworld Series DVD in new edition volumes and to possibly start production on a new film. Personal life In addition to producing claymation films, Benfer has also pursued a musical career. Some of the songs that Knox has released include "I Have An Apple", "Secret Man", "Robotic" and a song he did with his best friend Sammie called "Race Car Fantasy". Most of the song he has released are included in his album on iTunes. Foot Ball! (2008) * All songs written and composed by Robert Benfer # "Be Happy" - 4:19 # "Best Thing..." - 2:57 # "Cat Videos On the Internet" - 4:55 # "Guilty Orange" - 2:33 # "Burn Until You Die" - 2:25 # "This Is a Squirrel World" - 3:25 # "Pink Towel" - 3:58 # "I'm Gonna Marry Christmas" - 2:12 # "Lellow Lamp" # "Robotic" # "Sad Toy GI Joe" # "Billy Tom" # "Shoe on a Stick" # "Penguins" # "I'm So Strong" # "Candy Mountain" # "This Is How It Ends" ''Expensive Suit'' (2009) Benfer later released a follow-up album, Expensive Suit, in January 2009. The album is currently available as a digital download on iTunes. Track listing *'1' - Bread Taxi *'2' - Roach *'3' - Dang Diggity Dang *'4' - Eat a Leather Jacket *'5' - Run Away *'6' - Rocks *'7' - Going to the Moon in a Cardboard Box *'8' - The Milk Song *'9' - Blah *'10' - D6 *'11' - Working While I Work *'12' - Klay World Super jam Mix 2011 *'13' - Bread Taxi (Version 2) Robert Benfer released a CD full of his songs on CreateSpace for $14.99. This album combines "Football" and "Expensive Suit" to create a CD full of the fan favorites from 2006 to 2009. Official "Tiny Instruments" Song Listing: *'1' - Be Happy *'2' - Cat Videos of the Internet *'3' - Guilty Orange *'4' - Rocks *'5' - Going to the Moon in a Cardboard Box *'6' - The Milk Song *'7' - Alone in the Snow *'8' - Best Thing That Happened Today *'9' - Blah *'10' - Burn Until You Die *'11' - Pink Towel *'12' - Dang Diggity Dang Dang *'13' - Eat A Leather Jacket *'14' - Billy Tom *'15' - Robotic *'16' - Lellow Lamp *'17' - Elephants *'18' - I Have an Apple (2006) *'19' - Secret Man (2006) *'20' - Door Stealer (2006) Before releasing high quality songs to buy on iTunes, Knox would often release the songs for free on his website. The first song that he released that was released with a music video was the song "Yellow Book". Filmography Out Now - Klay World: Off The Table (2005) - Klay World Series (2006) - Outside the Knox (2006) (V) - Came as a special feature on the Klay World Series DVD. Coming Soon - Joe Cam (2008) - Villain (2010) Sources This article incorporates text from Knox's IMDB Page Links * Knox's Korner * Knox's Metacafe * Knox's Youtube * Knox's IMDB Page * Knox's Myspace * Knox's Facebook * Knox's Cafepress * Knox's Zazzle Category:Animators